Capturing in Final Cut
 

I can't seem to find anything in the manual about this but SURELY there must be an easier way of capturing footage.

From reading the manual this is the process that I am having to go through. A fter shooting some footage I have to laboriously shuttle through the tape and for every clip I have to mark an 'in' and 'out' point then capture it - I have to do this for EVERY clip one by one. This is a very time consuming and boring process considering that I am capturing each clip from where I press 'record' on the camera to where I press 'stop' and seeing that I have read that the camera (an XM2) puts a marker at every record start/stop point on the tape.

If there is a marker on the tape for every start and stop of recording isn't there a way of getting Final Cut to scan through the tape and automatically capture all the clips that have been recorded using this record start/stop data?

Read the capture parts in the manual, it does a good job of describing the options available in FCP. You can capture an entire tape, capture scene by scene as you log your tape or do a batch capture. Batch capture involves logging the ins and outs, then capturing just the clips logged automatically. A cue to marker is not an option for capture.

I always just press play and then the capture: Now button. Assuming the aren't any timecode breaks all your footage will be captured to you harddrive. Then just set the in and out points and make subclips.

Doing this from tape is just to much of a pain and doesn't really seem to be worth it if space isn't much of an issue.

You need to develop your own method of capturing that works for you.

What works for me, is that I try VERY hard to record each tape with no time code breaks. Then I leave each tape at the end after the shoot. When capturing, I load the tape and mark the end; rewind and mark the beginning (I record fluff at the beginning and end of each tape so that I don't have to be precise).
After marking the ends, I type in the info and then log the clip. Usually, I immediately Batch capture that tape.

When I have all tapes in, I either pull the material as I need it, or create subclips as Benjamin does.

Of course, if you don't have the disk space, then you can log each and every take on the tape, but only load in the parts that you want...

Nah, just get more disk space.

I seem to remember that iMovie could detect the camera markers on a tape, but FCP doesn't seem to have the ability.

>> Read the capture parts in the manual <<

I'm running Final Cut Express and the manual is VERY limited in the capture area. It basically just has a sentence to describe each one (clip, now, project) for 'project' is just says that this is for 'recapturing footage'.

I didn't really want to just capture the entire section of footage and then make clips from that - this mens having one MASSIVE file on my hard disk. IF this is the best way though so be it...

So I assume that final cut does not recognise the start stop markers on the tape?

Also, regarding timecode breaks - what's the best way of avoiding them and what happens if you have one in some footage that you want?

FCP3 does have a start/stop detection after video is imported. Tools/DV Start/Stop Detection

FCE has this too which is for use AFTER the footage has been captured - AFTER???!!!

Yes, you can only use it after. It's a step down from iMovie (hehe) because in iMovie you can take down notes while capturing and your notes would correspond with the clip numbers, which FCP does not increment.

Anyways, do capture now or what Michael does (which is what I do). Avoid timecode breaks (if you get them then fast forward past the break and start capturing). I find it best to capture one huge clip and run DV start/stop detection. Otherwise you can do the log and capture thing, which lets you take notes at the same time but then you have to wait for it to capture all your clips once you are finished logging.

Don't use iMovie with FCP, they don't play well together. iMovie clips need rendering or batch conversion.